On Head vs Heart

I fell in love with Effective Altruism at first sight. Finally! Here was a community who was using cold hard evidence to change the world, instead of basing it on what ‘might’ work.

To me, that represented the best of both head and heart – we have the heart to care, but the head to do it the best we can.

The main thing that I disagree with Effective Altruism on is cause selection. The EA community tends to focus more on poverty and AI because of how neglected they are. I’m an ardent environmentalist, and I don’t think it’ll change anytime soon. I refused to ‘defect’ to these other causes. Is that good? I don’t know. Something tells me that working on environment causes is still going to be more effective for me since I love it so much. Effectiveness depends on how much I will personally commit, too, and I think I can make a good contribution because I’ll commit a lot.